Zeno: Argument against Plurality The argument is contained in 4 =B1 and 3 =B2 (from Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics ). But there is a problem with the text, and some of the argument is garbled or lost. Fortunately, we can reconstruct it. Zeno attempts to show that the assumption that there are many things leads to a contradiction: viz., that each thing is both infinitely small and infinitely large. There are two limbs to the argument. The pluralist’s assumption, “There are many things,” leads to these two conclusions: A. Each thing is “so small as not to have size.” B. Each thing is “so large as to be unlimited.” Simplicius’s text does not preserve (A) completely. It starts with (A), and then is garbled and switches over to (B). But we can reconstruct the argument for (B). The Argument Simplicius (in 4 =B1) preserves one key principle (“if it exists, each thing must have some size and thickness”). It is a premise that Zeno thinks his materialist/pluralist opponents

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